Should I be hoovering nutrasoil?

[Lindy]

Should I be 'cleaning' my tmc nutrasoil substrate?

 

[Martin in Holland]

Yes, wafting with your hand to get the "dust" from the bottom when doing WC and hoover as much as you can.

 

[Lee Sweeting]

Hi Lindy! In low tech tanks such as ours were we are not flooding the tank with water column fertilisers (to keep your TDS low for the chocco's/paros), some decomposition in the substrate is good thing. This decomposition provides nutrients and CO2 for the plants, which in turn helps keep the tank healthy. My tank has been running for about six months to date, and i have only given the substrate one very light clean (recently).

Hope that help?

 

[aliclarke86]

I don't clean the soil in any of my shrimp tanks....don't know if this helps

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[sciencefiction]

Yes, I am guilty of the same
I honestly never had an issue not siphoning the substrate, either with fish or with algae. It's safe if you have shrimp and Malaysian trumpet snails because organics are reduced to minimum size that bacteria can colonize and produce nutrients and co2, providing there's plenty of oxygen in the tank and the substrate is not extremely deep, plus well planted of course.

 

[Martin in Holland]

Low tech tanks are a different story indeed.....

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I'm the same as others, I don't really siphon the mulm up.

cheers Darrel

 

[Tim Harrison]

Me neither, but I do give everything a gentle wafting as I siphon during water changes.